JMP journals are a great way to organize, annotate and present analysis results.

You may not know this, but the color, font, size and style of the text content in journals can be formatted. This is an attractive feature, but since each block of text — and each attribute — must be addressed individually, the process can be prohibitively time-consuming for large journals.

The new Journal Text Sledgehammer add-in changes this, as it permits convenient bulk formatting of journal text. All you need to do is select the text blocks you want to edit, click a few buttons, and all of the selected text will be formatted as you wish.

If you make no selections in the journal, all of the text boxes in the journal will be formatted. Otherwise, formatting changes will only be applied to the selected items.

Any time an Outline box is highlighted, formatting changes will be applied to all of the text boxes contained within it.

Another great feature of the Sledgehammer — and, incidentally, the origin of its name — is that it can open, or close, all of the journal’s Outline Boxes with a single click. This is a real timesaver when you are trying to locate something in a large, hierarchically organized journal. In fact, I use the Sledgehammer for this purpose as much as any other.

The Sledgehammer add-in is now available for download on the JMP File Exchange (a free SAS profile is required.) If you work with journals (and you should!) download it and give it a test run. You’ll wonder how you got along without it.